It went on eloquently, but that about sums it up. (I have great regard for this friend’s ability to put things totally bluntly, without making me feel attacked, like a terrible person, and without her sounding like a bitch or condescending. I wish I had that ability, but I don’t think I do.)

Anyway, in emailing her back, a few things occurred to me.

1. I would have no problem with this if we were showing many types of bodies as beautiful, and this were just another one. But,

2. as I saw it, we were just extending the already-almost-unattainable body into a completely-unattainable-body.

As I was explaining this, I said that while I felt it was morally wrong to say what I was saying, practically speaking I didn’t want to be showing young girls something that they couldn’t possibly ever do on a skeletal level as the standard of beauty.

This is when somehting occurred to me. Except for the 5% of people who are born with that model body type, we are already showing young girls something they can’t possibly do on a skeletal level. We’re already having to play damage control because it’s already impossible. Not almost impossible, but totally impossible for 95% of the population. I’m sure there is another 5% of the population that has a very male body type; no hips, broad chest and shoulders, etc. (They still aren’t going to have the muscles along the abdomen that men have, but an MTF modeling is going to have issues a cis-woman doesn’t anyway, so it’s a wash IMO.) If we have an MTF modeling, then at least those girls (and also the other girls born in male bodies) have a representative, too.

What we need to be doing is adding more body types into what’s considered beautiful. While I wouldn’t have chosen a body type that’s an extreme of what we already have, that also doesn’t mean we should exclude it. This is one of those two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right moments. Saying, “We need other body types but not that one” is bullshit. I call bullshit on myself.

I feel much better now. I have two centers of what’s right and wrong: my head and my heart. My heart always figures it out first, but until my head figures it out, too, things don’t work well. Now I’ve got both lined up. Woo hoo!

So I can say without reservations, go Jenna! (The model. Not me.) And also – Thanks, Momo. You rock my socks.

Has everyone seen this? To sum up: a MTF model fought to get into the Canadian Beauty Pagent and won! (Won the fight; the pageant will have probably been decided by the time this posts, but as if this writing she’s in the top 5.)

The queer part of me is like YES THAT IS SO TOTALLY AWESOME (and at the same time, OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE I WANT TO GIVE DONALD TRUMP A PAT ON THE BACK), but the feminist part (the bit that’s not frothing at the mouth over the fact that we have these at all, and that 60% of the points are based solely on appearance) is kind of scared.

I do think transgendered folks ought to go into whatever beauty contests they like and whatever else they like as their correct gender.

I also think it’s kind of terrifying that the notion of womanly beauty is… a cis-male body. A surgically altered cis-male body, yes. An extremely lean cis-male body, yes. But it’s still a cis-male body. The muscle and bone structure are different than in a cis-female body — that little belly pooch that women have to hold reproductive organs, for instance, that pooch that we’re already taught is bad, is gone. The body fat percentage that covers those muscles is gone. The muscles themselves develop more obviously, the collarbones go straight across instead of angling downward, the shoulders are broader, the legs are longer, curves are less pronounced (ribcage is broader and pelvis is narrower), body fat isn’t distributed on butt and hips, the alignment of the stomach muscles is notably different, there are in fact muscles over the hips and below the obliques that women don’t even have — there’s a bunch of stuff like that.

In short, the things we’re already taught are bad in women aren’t even there to begin with — because it’s not a cis-female body! Now we’re being told that really what we need to look like are lean cis-male bodies with boobs and vaginas. (Kudos to Jenna’s doctor, though, because they don’t look like Barbie boobs. Presumably good doctors can do that, now.) (I cannot believe spellcheck is telling me there’s no such word as vaginas. *sighs*) (Also, good name choice there, Jenna! :D)

So… yeah. It disturbs me that this is the person modeling for women as what we should look like, even more than cis-female models who’ve undergone surgery.

(Photoshop makes me just as disturbed as this does.)

On the other hand… I can’t say it’s right not to allow transgender folks to model, either. It’s just very fucked up. 😦

So, I recently cut my hair (and put an awesome red stripe in the front, as well!). This happened about 3 months ago. Not too long after, I was standing in the midst of a party of mostly lesbians, and I realized… nearly everyone had short hair.

I went to Cancun on a lesbian resort, and… everyone had short hair.

I have gay hair.

It needs to be long again.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with gay hair, and my haircut is super cute. But you know what? When it was chin-length it was longer than almost all the other gays I hung out with, and it got comments ALL THE TIME on how cute it was. Now I get compliments from straight people, and occasionally gay people, but mostly I think it looks like a lot of other gay haircuts so we’re used to seeing it. I don’t do well blending with the crowd.

I need a new haircut. It can’t be too long because I don’t want to deal with long hair (and Quin really doesn’t like long hair; since she has to look at me, I figure it’s only fair to take that into consideration!). I’m thinking chin-shoulder length. I have no idea what beyond that, but clearly I need a new cut. My life. She is hard. 😉

Hilariously, it does occur to me that I’ll likely be missed as gay again, if I grow my hair out. I mean, I’m still missed half the time now, but I’ll REALLY be overlooked. Oh well. It’s worth it!

Lately, it’s been bothering me that I’m changing my wardrobe choices to more accurately reflect what Q likes. Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wearing clothes that will make your steady swallow their tonguewith wearing clothes that will garner an excellent reaction with wearing clothes your steady will be comfortable with, but I’ve noticed a few mornings I chose not to wear something I kind of wanted to wear, because I was going to see Q later that day.

This bugs me. A lot.

When I was dating DK I found myself picking up more skirts and dresses, getting much more femme-y. She liked it, I got a great response from it, I could. When we stopped dating, I wore whatever the hell I felt like wearing, which was fewer skirts but still some, occasional tomboy clothes, lots of semi-andro clothes. (I say semi, because no boy would ever wear shorts as short as I do.) Then I started dating Q, who is more reserved in the clothes she likes, who generally leans more toward being attracted to andro and butch people than femme, and I started wearing more shorts, T-shirts, guy’s tanks, etc. All clothes I had worn before, but now I was wearing more of them.

At first, I thought about it and decided it was okay, because they were also the clothes I wanted to wear. I was sliding back toward my tomboy roots, and that was cool. But lately, as I said, a few times I’ve chosen NOT to wear something when I really wanted to, because of Q reasons. The funny thing is, they are often reasons like:
1. I’m going to see Q, and we might take the motorcycle (OMG THAT THING IS AWESOME) somewhere, so I need pants and shoes.
2. I’m going to see Q, and we’re going two-stepping, so I need jeans and cowboy boots.
3. I’m going to see Q, and we’re going horseback riding, so–

You see how this is working, right? Occasionally it’s,
4. I’m going to see Q, and I really want her to be all, ‘mmmm, you’re so sexy,’ so I’ll wear clothes that won’t unsettle her.

but that’s actually quite rare (most of the time I’m more like, “These clothes will unsettle her. Ha ha ha, it builds character and I like them! :D”). And she and I have talked about this, and she really doesn’t want me to change the clothes I wear on her account, so it’s certainly not like I’m getting pressure there. But if we’re going to do something that requires non-girly clothes, and I don’t want to pack my entire closet, then I kind of have to wear non-girly clothes.

Q fixed this. She didn’t mean to, and I hadn’t even realized she’d fixed it until tonight, but she did. You know how? I have a drawer at her place now. You guys. I have a drawer. Of my own. That I can put clothes in. I apparently have some underwear, socks, and a shirt there already (seemingly I misplace clothes as much as I misplace books — and now I keep thinking of “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.” I love that song, but hate the video.), and I was thinking I might leave a pair of PJs there. (Psst: I don’t generally wear PJs. Except at Q’s, when I want something comfy to slouch around in. Except then I actually wear her clothes, ha ha. BUT, sometimes she has kids there, and I would rather walk around in my PJs in the morning than my underwear, oddly enough.) Then tonight, it occurred to me that I could leave OTHER things there. Things like a pair of jeans I don’t wear very often and so wouldn’t miss, but if I had them there then I could go up in my dress or whatever and still be able to go biking/two-stepping/etc without packing eighty zillion things! And an extra white tank, so that I could at a moment’s notice swap from girly clothes to andro-enough-for-if-we-go-out-and-I-don’t-want-to-wear-my-sundress clothes! And then I can wear my dresses. 😀 (I’m still not sure I’d wear my skirts. See, most of them are S H O R T. And they have shorts under them, so it’s not even like fun skirts. They just look good. *grins*)

Also, I’m having femmey glee at having a drawer of my own. Sure, it makes sense and it tickles the practical side of me, too, as well as the romantic side and the side that really likes Q, but — I’m not even sure I can explain it. It’s exciting, that’s all. 😀 And now my practical side WILL be much happier, and I’ll feel less like a chameleon, changing how I look to please the people around me. My practical side can rest easy that I’m not packing tons of clothes, and my ego side can be happy that I’m not changing how I look to please someone else. WOO HOO!

I had an awesome day today! I talked to Q (who is in CO), got a feel-better package from my little sister (who found decaf holiday flavored coffee — I’m caffeine sensitive, and special coffees are almost NEVER decaf! — three books I love, a really sweet card, and an adorable black tank top!), had lunch with Nezu, and then (still with Nezu) went on The Hunt To Find Red Sandals.

See, I have various outfits that look absolutely adorable with red sandals. (Also, surprising flashes of red are never out of style.) (As a sidenote, my grandfather picked up ‘adorable’ as a verb for clothing at one point — teasing girls, I believe, and how we’d show off our clothes. He’d jokingly say, “It’s adorable.” I have no idea why he started this — I suspect it wasn’t nice, to begin with — but every time I say or think ‘adorable’ now I do it in his teasing “that’s cute, but mostly you’re funny” tone, but it makes me happy.)

Alas, my old red sandals were kind of… sad. 😦

So, so sad. RIP, fabulous red sandals.

But Nezu, being a good butch who quite likes watching femmes get all femmed up, drove me around hell’s half acre today and we found ADORABLE RED SANDALS. Uh, a couple of pairs. >.> But we were at Ross, and they were cheap, and I’m making stupid amounts of money at the moment (which is to say like, $2,500/month, which for me is INSANE. Shush. I just started a business. I HAVE MAD BUDGETING SKILLZ.)

So first, we found the adorable-yet-sensible-red-shoes-that-will-look-fabulous-with-my-awesome-black-white-and-red-dress-along-with-other-things:

Ignore the non-matching, chipped toenail polish. I only have so many hours in my day, after all.

I can totally wear these for hours. They have enough of a heel to do good things to my legs, but they’re comfy and cute. Yay!

But then… well, then Nezu found The Most Amazing Red Shoes Ever That Will Look So Perfect With My White Dress (Among Other Things, Such As When I Am Wearing Nothing, Or Perhaps Only Lingerie. I Could Walk Nekkid Down The Street In These Shoes, And No One Would Mind.) I love them even though they have bows, and I am generally anti-bow! (It’s more a lace, really. >.>) And even though they are INSANELY high, and have skinny heels, which I’ve never actually owned before! I will have to practice walking in them. OMG! In fact, I’m going to make it a point to wear them over the next few weeks, because after my photo-shoot and wandering in them for twenty minutes, my feet muscles were tired! Oh, dear. I can fix that, though! Q will be sore from bull riding, I’ll be sore from wearing heels. Equally tough, really. ;-D

Look! Look at the fabulous red shoes!

Fabulous even with a war cap and jeans!

You have no idea how perfect they really are. I love red. My house has red accents — throw pillows, bath towels, picture frames! Even the animals get red.

Bobby was wise enough to be born with red.

So the shoes? They are FABULOUS.

AND, they were marked down to $13 (from $50), so I was frugal, too! 😀 Now I need to get some of those happy feet inserts and build up foot muscle, ohyes. And learn how to walk in them. (Mostly in the house. My practical side wins in that if I can’t ever walk in them, I’m taking them back. *sighs* I’ll have to train really hard!)